1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention is generally directed to area array connectors adapted to connect the contact pads of one generally planar circuit element, such as a printed circuit board, to corresponding contact pads on another generally planar circuit element.
2. Description of Related Art
In many electronic applications, compactness of the electronic assembly is an important goal. One manner of achieving this compactness is to stack circuit cards, such as printed circuit boards, one upon another, and electrically connecting the circuit cards together.
In order to make use of such a compact arrangement, it is necessary that the face-to-face connection of circuit cards be made assuredly both electrically and mechanically. Interposers, such as area array connectors, are often used to connect corresponding contact pads on adjacent circuit cards for this purpose.
An important component of many interposer designs for electrically connecting circuit cards is that of providing power interconnection. In some conventional interposer designs power interconnection is provided through separate, large, discrete power contacts that have to be physically separated from the interposer. In other conventional interposer designs, a number of single electrical contacts are scattered around the interposer and connected electrically in parallel via the power and ground plane circuitry on the circuit card. This interposer design wastes a large amount of valuable circuit card area and creates a problem with what is commonly called “current sharing”, i.e., the need to split the current nearly equally between all of the parallel electrical contacts.